Ariadne's Thread
by Dante Morgan
Summary: With Las Noches being rebuilt and the wounds left by the Blood War slowly mending, Grimmjow ventures into the Living World to demand the rematch he had been promised. Upon arriving, he finds that not only is Kurosaki not there, but he has disappeared entirely; an imposter wearing his human skin in his stead. Grimmjow goes to seek answers, but finds more than he'd bargained for...
1. Chapter 1

_For Shapooda._

* * *

**Chapter 1**

Grimmjow emerged from the Garganta, leaving the cold and empty void between dimensions behind in favor of the cloying, humid warmth of summertime Karakura.

The sun had only just set here in the human world; the last of its rays still peeking out from behind the horizon and painting the sky in vibrant tones of orange and red. The smell of sunbaked brick assaulted his senses, and straight away Grimmjow felt grateful to have left his black shirt behind in the much-chillier Hueco Mundo. Even wearing just his jacket, the humidity still got to him almost right away, and he had little doubt that he would be dripping with sweat within the hour.

The tear in space behind him closed as Grimmjow jumped down from the rooftop on which he'd emerged, and he touched down on the pavement below with inhuman agility and lightness, never making so much as a sound. He proceeded to saunter down the street with all the unhurriedness of a man who hadn't just fallen from two stories up; calm and with his hands buried in his pants pockets. The chirping of crickets resounding between the housefronts all around him was kind of annoying, but not enough so to get to him. He was in too good a mood for that.

After all, he'd been biding his time for _weeks_ just to get the chance to finally get away from the rebuilding efforts and come here, and Grimmjow was far more excited about it than he cared to admit, even to himself. Tonight, he was gonna get what he'd been promised all those months ago. It'd been one thing after another lately that had gotten in the way, but now, he was here to collect, at long fucking last.

Aizen was in a straightjacket, that bastard Quincy Emperor had been chopped to pieces and made into a new Soul King, and Las Noches was finally starting to become something close to habitable again. There were no megalomaniacs, world-ending disasters or slave-driving Arrancar women around to keep him from getting what he wanted, this time.

Only problem was, what he wanted didn't appear to be home.

Grimmjow halted in front of the Kurosaki clinic, crickets chirping loudly in the background as he stared at the large sign hanging over the building's entrance.

Unbelievable. _Un-be-fucking-lievable._

Grimmjow had dragged his ass all the way over to the shitty human world for the express purpose of meeting him here, and Kurosaki had the sheer _gall _to not be present. If he hadn't already been planning on having a fight to the death, Grimmjow would have killed him for the sheer _rudeness _of it all.

Still. Even if Kurosaki wasn't home, his family sure was, if the Reiatsu coming from inside was any indication. And Grimmjow couldn't think of a better possible way to lure that overprotective fuckhead out of hiding. He cracked his neck and broke out in a wolfish grin. His fingers twitched as crimson energy sparked between them. A Cero should do just fine as far as motivation went. Hell, he wouldn't even need to hit anything. A warning shot alone would suffice to have Kurosaki breaking the sound barrier on his mad dash back from wherever the hell he'd fucked off to.

The shadows cast by the setting sun were stretched out by the ominous, crimson glow of Grimmjow's Cero, crawling over the hot asphalt as the sphere in his palm grew, and—

_"Oi!"_

Grimmjow stiffened, the Cero flickering in his palm. He knew that voice.

"What do you think you're doing?!"

Slowly, Grimmjow turned to face the new arrival. "Ringin' the damn doorbell," he snarked. "The fuck's it look like I'm doing?" He narrowed his eyes. "You're not Kurosaki."

The stranger wearing Kurosaki's skin worked his jaw, eyeing the Cero with trepidation. "I—no. I'm not. I-I'm Kon. I'm the Mod Soul you met at the Soul King's palace, remember?"

Grimmjow stared at him. "…The what?"

"Oh, come on! Don't tell me you forgot!" Kon whined, forgoing a lot of his earlier discomfort in favor of gesticulating dramatically. It was incredibly disturbing seeing Kurosaki's body acting like that, even knowing the kid himself wasn't in it. "I was this giant, stuffed lion at the time?" Kon tried, using his hand to show how tall he'd apparently been. "Kinda looked like a bodybuilder?"

"That sounds fucking retarded," Grimmjow monotoned.

"Hey!" Kon cried out in indignation. "Don't blame me for that; that was all Creepy Clownface's doing!" He abruptly broke out in shudders, shiftily looking from left to right as if he was expecting this 'Clownface'-guy to come jumping out of some bushes at any moment now. Once again, Grimmjow couldn't help but feel off-put by the very much un-Kurosaki-like behavior. "I swear, I just keep getting violated by these old, crazy scientist type-guys! Why couldn't it at least have been cute girls doing the violating?!" Kon lamented, and Grimmjow felt his patience wear thin.

"I'd have been fine with cute girls!" Kon went right on, too caught up in his lamentations to notice Grimmjow slowly aiming the Cero in his direction instead of the house's. "Hell, even when I finally get myself a body with a working dick attached to it, I'm _still_ not allowed to have any fun! Tell me; how is that supposed to be fair?!"

"Just how the hell _did _you get your stuffed mitts on that body?" Grimmjow interjected, pouncing on Kon's little slip of the tongue like it was wounded prey. The guy froze up, eyes going round as dinner plates when he finally noticed the Death Ray-to-be that was pointed right at his face. "I seriously doubt a weak little pissant like you managed to _take _it from him." Grimmjow stalked closer; Kon backing up until his knees knocked into the brick planter flanking the clinic's entrance and he fell ass-first into the shrubbery.

"I-I-I've only got it on loan!" Kon squeaked, holding out his hands in surrender. "Just until Ichigo comes back! You know, kinda like how you shouldn't leave a car in the garage for months on end if you're not planning on driving it?!"

Grimmjow held the crimson orb of death right up in Kon's face, and the guy stopped his babbling, swallowing audibly. "I'm only gonna ask this once, _Mod Soul," _Grimmjow gritted out. "Where. The hell. Is Kurosaki?"

Whatever Kon was about to say in reply, it stopped mattering once Grimmjow felt the bite of live steel being pressed right up against his jugular.

"If you're looking for my son, I'm afraid he's unavailable," a man with a deep voice and one hairy-ass forearm spoke from behind Grimmjow. "Whatever issues the two of you have, you can fight it out between yourselves some other time. For now, I suggest you stop threatening the wellbeing of my son's friend and body both."

Grimmjow clicked his tongue. "I fucking knew your Reiatsu felt weaker than what it really was," he grumbled. "Figures the kid's father would be a goddamned Shinigami." Grimmjow allowed his Cero to flicker out, and Kon fell all the way back into the bushes behind him, going limp from sheer relief.

The pressure of the sword's edge against his Hierro lessened, and Grimmjow took several cautious steps backward with both hands raised, before slowly turning around and coming face-to-face with the Kurosaki patriarch. "…You're a lot fucking hairier than the Kurosaki I know," he remarked.

Loud, billowing laughter followed his proclamation, but Grimmjow was under no illusion that the man was at all distracted or in any way vulnerable. This guy was strong. _A lot _stronger than he was making himself out to be. Grimmjow was pretty sure his neck was bleeding, even.

"So my kids keep reminding me," the elder Kurosaki said, cheerfully enough. "Name's Isshin. I'm gonna take a wild guess and say you're Grimmjow—my son's mentioned you once or twice. If the hair alone hadn't given it away, then the jawbone Mask and attitude problem sure would have."

Grimmjow bristled. "The fuck's Kurosaki telling you about me for?" he demanded.

"Who knows? But it's a good thing he did," Isshin said, never dropping his smile. "If I hadn't known who you were, I'd have cut you down like a dog in the street."

Grimmjow swore he felt chills running down his spine.

"Or cat, I suppose," Isshin went on, absently rubbing a hand over his scruff-covered jawline. "Not much of a difference, really. I've found all Hollows tend to go out much the same way once a Zanpakutou runs them through."

Isshin clapped a hand down on his shoulder, and Grimmjow just about jumped right out of his fucking skin. "Reschedule your playdate with Ichigo for another time," Isshin suggested, even though it sure as shit didn't sound like a suggestion to Grimmjow. He could feel the man's burning-hot Reiatsu sear the top layer of his Hierro, even through his jacket. "For now, I suggest you go and cool off in that desert of yours for a bit."

After one last, painful squeeze, Isshin let go, and the only thing that stopped Grimmjow from _Sonido_-ing way the fuck back and out of the guy's immediate reach was his pride. "…When's Kurosaki gonna be back?" Grimmjow asked, doing his best to inject his voice with a nonchalance he sure as shit wasn't feeling right this moment.

At that, Isshin's razor-sharp gaze grew clouded for the first time since he showed up. The question had troubled him. _Interesting. _Just what the hell was going on with Kurosaki? It didn't look like he'd gone away on a simple trip.

"…I'm afraid I couldn't tell you," Isshin responded, after a pause that dragged just a tad too long. "Could be tomorrow, could be a month from now." '_Could be never' _went unsaid, but Grimmjow heard it loud and clear nonetheless. "You're welcome to check in, every now and then."

"I don't need your fucking _permission _to do anything, Shinigami," Grimmjow sneered, already turning around to leave.

"I suppose not," Isshin allowed. "But just to be clear, _Arrancar_…"

Searing Reiatsu fell on Grimmjow like an anvil, the already-hot Summer air becoming sweltering.

'…Point a Cero anywhere near my daughters, ever again, and I will burn you alive where you stand, friend of Ichigo's or not."

To hell with his pride. Grimmjow kept his mouth shut and got the hell out of there, never once looking back.

* * *

So, now what was he supposed to do?

Grimmjow had seated himself atop the roof of one of Karakura's taller buildings, one leg folded beneath him while the other dangled over the edge, heel occasionally bumping into the window below.

He was not sulking. Absolutely not. The second-most-powerful Arrancar in existence did not fucking sulk. If he was getting any enjoyment from listening to the couple on the top floor worry about their window being haunted, then that was completely unrelated to the situation and not at all an attempt to make himself feel better.

Kurosaki wasn't in Karakura anymore, that much at least was obvious. The kid was wasteful enough with his Reiatsu that a small army of lesser Hollows could have lived off of it without ever needing to hunt. And from the troubled look in his father's eyes, Grimmjow doubted he'd gone somewhere he could come back from easily.

He hated getting sidelined like this. Being denied what he'd been promised. Pretty much getting told to fuck off, really, if not in so many words.

His fingers dug into the flesh of his own biceps. But what could he do about it? Go look for the brat himself? Isshin sure as shit wasn't going to be forthcoming with answers any time soon. Never mind that if he came anywhere near the man's daughters again tonight, he'd probably get straight-up fucking murdered. The only other Shinigami that had given off such a 'certain death'-vibe to Grimmjow had been Aizen himself.

He had no leads, and no one who was liable to give him any. Maybe that green-clad Shinigami with the cane would be willing to point him in the right direction, but that guy wasn't the type to give anything away for free, and Grimmjow wasn't sure his help would be worth the inevitable cost.

...Unless.

Grimmjow sat upright as he picked up another familiar Reiatsu signature. There was one other person who was likely to know where Kurosaki was. And she'd be _much_ easier to persuade into talking than anyone else here. Even if not, he could always turn her into a bargaining chip herself…

With a wicked grin that just about split his face in half, Grimmjow got to his feet, accidentally kicking in the window below and drawing screams of terror from the flat's inhabitants. He blurred into Sonido, and was already halfway across town before the shards of glass could even hit the ground.

He rocketed through the air at full speed; a mad dash fueled by single-minded determination as he homed in on the girl's Reiatsu. He dove for her apartment building, still split on whether he'd be banging on the door to get her attention or just breaking right through it without ever slowing down, when—

"Oh, there you are!"

Grimmjow swore he felt the soles of his boots burn up from the friction as he tried to slow down from near-supersonic speed to a full stop in one-and-a-half seconds flat. An unruffled Orihime Inoue stood in her open doorway, her long hair briefly fluttering in the draft Grimmjow's little stunt had kicked up.

"I was just wondering when you'd show up," she elaborated, tucking her hair behind her ear. "Come on in."

With that, she turned around and walked right back inside, leaving the door open behind her. Grimmjow could only blink owlishly at her retreating back, never even being given a chance to speak. Dazed, confused and more than a bit angry but too damn _curious _about just what the shit was going on to care, he followed her inside, not bothering to shut the door.

Once inside, he found her already sitting down at her living room table, two empty glasses and a pitcher full of iced tea standing ready. It was one of those typical Japanese tables, too; square-shaped, tiny as shit, and way too fucking low to the ground, so that you had no other choice but to sit on the damn floor like a savage.

Subsequently, Grimmjow loomed over her when he used his tried-and-true 'start talking or die'-staredown technique, but he wasn't having much luck. The brat just stared right back at him; eyebrows raised expectantly. Neither of them said so much as a word. The only sound was the clinking of the ice cubes floating within the pitcher.

As the seconds ticked by, Grimmjow couldn't help but feel that the first one to break the silence would be losing the staredown. He was getting to be just the right combination of pissed off and impatient for him to not really care, however. "What the fuck is this supposed to be?" he finally demanded, his brusque voice reverberating against the walls of the tiny apartment.

"Sit down first," Inoue insisted, ignoring his question. "Have some tea. You must be thirsty, what with the heat outside."

Grimmjow felt a vein in his temple swell. Hog-tying her and using her as a bargaining chip for information from someone less irritating was fast becoming difficult to resist.

"You want to know where Ichigo is, don't you?" she asked, just when Grimmjow's temper threatened to boil over. His entire body stiffened when she spoke Kurosaki's name, and Grimmjow cursed himself for not managing to hide his reaction. "So sit," she repeated.

Grimmjow gritted his teeth. With a huff, he let himself collapse onto the stupid, tiny pillow below him, the living room floor shaking when all eighty kilos of him plopped down on it. "Start talking," Grimmjow demanded, hissing the words out from between clenched teeth.

"First, tell me why you want to know," Inoue countered, without missing a beat. "What are you planning to do, once you find him?"

Grimmjow _really _wasn't liking the way she managed to stay in control of this whole exchange. "I'm gonna fucking kill him, obviously," he sneered.

"Hmm." She considered his words, tapping one finger against the corner of her mouth. "You're not really giving me much incentive to tell you, you do realize?."

A muscle in Grimmjow's cheek twitched. "How's this for incentive, then?" he growled. "You can either tell me what I wanna know now, or you can tell me after I'm finished pulling your guts out with my bare hands."

"You wouldn't do that," she stated with conviction. "Not over something this petty. And besides…" her grey eyes met his own dead-on. "...A threat only works when you're capable of following through on it."

Grimmjow felt himself _snap._

He shot forward, one hand slamming down onto the table while the other reached for the girl's collar, fingers curling into claws and moving faster than a human's eyes could possibly follow—

_"Shiten Koshun."_

Only for his hand to slam right into an orange barrier.

"I reject."

With a flash of light, the shield disintegrated, but not before doling out a vicious retaliation that left Grimmjow's right hand mangled and spurting blood. Grimmjow was too shocked to even feel the pain. "What the hell," he uttered tonelessly, staring at the girl with eyes wide as blood dribbled onto the too-small table. She hadn't even fucking _flinched. _"You were letting that bitch Loly slap you around without even putting up a fight less than a year ago. When the fuck did you decide to grow a spine?"

"When I found that I didn't like being the damsel in distress," she replied. "It seems to make things awfully hard on my friends when I go and get myself kidnapped."

Grimmjow could only gape at her.

"Sit back down and have some tea," she insisted yet again, not batting an eye at the growing puddle of crimson that was staining her living room table. "I'll fix your hand if you do."

Setting his jaw, Grimmjow pretty much let himself drop back down, crossing his legs and settling into a mulish, forward slouch. With a glint of satisfaction—one that was soon hidden away underneath a placid smile—Inoue filled their glasses. As soon as his was full, Grimmjow snatched it away and downed the whole thing in three unnecessarily large gulps, refusing to watch as Inoue used her nonsensical powers to restore his hand to its prior state.

"Kurosaki promised me a fight," Grimmjow broke the silence, slamming his empty glass down on the tabletop. "Said he'd give me one whenever I wanted." Inoue's eyes were on him as he spoke, the girl listening intently. "I've gotten a hell of a lot stronger since last time. I know for a fact that Kurosaki has, too." He clenched his newly-healed hand into a fist. "I wanna see how I measure up."

Inoue regarded him for a bit longer, then averted her gaze. "...That might be difficult, with Ichigo as he is now."

Grimmjow sighed deeply. Fucking figured it'd be like that. "He went and did something stupid again, didn't he?" Grimmjow asked, running a hand through his hair in exasperation.

Inoue let out a soft chuckle. "For what little time you've spent together, you already seem to know him quite well," she elaborated in response to Grimmjow's raised eyebrow. Her fingers tapped against her frosted glass of tea in a methodic pattern. "Alright then," she eventually decided. "I'll tell you what's been going on these past few weeks. And after I do, you can decide for yourself whether or not you still want to see him."

* * *

Grimmjow's head was spinning.

Time and time again, he tried to wrap his mind around the tale Inoue had told him, yet it straight-up failed to compute.

It just couldn't be true. Couldn't be _possible_. It was too goddamn _stupid_ for it to be possible, and yet…

And yet when he thought of Kurosaki—stupid, self-sacrificing, goddamn Hero Complex Kurosaki—Grimmjow almost couldn't imagine it _not _being true.

"I take it this isn't what you were expecting, Grimmjow-san."

Urahara Kisuke stood beside him, looking even scruffier than the last time Grimmjow had seen the man. Thick stubble covered his jaw, and his eyes were underlined by dark, severe-looking circles. Grimmjow didn't pay him any mind. He was too focused on the sight before him.

Here, in a secluded corner of Urahara's gigantic underground training room and warded by at least three separate layers of Kido barriers from what Grimmjow could tell, was where he'd finally found Kurosaki. He didn't know what to make of the fact that the Shopkeeper had brought him straight here as soon as Grimmjow told him he'd been sent by Inoue. Like they'd been _expecting _him to show up.

Kurosaki was seated on the ground, his back resting against one of the many rock formations that littered the basement, two swords laid out across his lap. His hair had grown longer since their last meeting in the Soul King's palace: orange locks almost reached down to the kid's shoulders now, and his fringe fell down in front of his eyes like a curtain with his head bent as it was. He looked like he'd just fallen asleep there.

Grimmjow knew better than to believe it was as simple as that. "...I can't feel any Reiatsu coming from him," he remarked, unable to tear his eyes away.

"No. You wouldn't." Urahara bent down and picked up a pebble from the ground. He threw it at Kurosaki in a lazy arc, and Grimmjow was shocked to see the air around his still body ripple and distort as a black-and-red… _something, _lashed out and reduced the tiny stone to dust, a fraction of a second before it would have bumped into Kurosaki's chest.

"Kurosaki-san appears to be subconsciously suppressing it to an incredible degree," Urahara explained. "When anything that could be seen as a threat comes near however, it erupts outward in a concentrated burst, almost like an automated defense. I would advise you to keep your distance."

"...Inoue said that she and the rest of Kurosaki's little posse could get close _without _getting torn to shreds," Grimmjow countered.

"Yes, but only so long as they did not attempt to move him," Urahara said. "We would have taken him somewhere more comfortable at least, if we could. As for how he might react to the presence of someone less… _amiable_ shall we say, such as yourself…"

Well now that just sounded like a challenge. Throwing Urahara's warning to the wind, Grimmjow approached the unconscious teen with rapid strides, merely throwing up a hand to shield his eyes when the crimson maelstrom that was Kurosaki's Reiatsu ripped through the space between them and tore at him like a hundred shadowy talons.

Just as soon as it had begun, the onslaught stopped again, and Grimmjow grinned, squinting one eye closed when blood began to trail down from his freshly-split eyebrow. It was gonna take a hell of a lot more than a stiff breeze to kill him. "The fuck kinda bullshit is this, Kurosaki?!" he demanded loudly, taking advantage of the momentary calm to draw nearer still. "You go and promise me a rematch, but when I come to collect you go all sleeping beauty on me?! Didn't think you were that big a pussy!"

Another torrent of Reiatsu came rushing toward him; less controlled than before and somehow angrier-looking, too. It split the earth open on its way to Grimmjow and cracked the rock Kurosaki was resting against, and Grimmjow was forced to block with both arms, feeling the scarred skin on his forearms get shredded all over again, courtesy of the exact same orange fuckhead as last time.

Flaring his own Reiatsu, Grimmjow tore through the wall of force and finally, his fingers closed around the collar of Kurosaki's uniform. "Don't ignore me, shithead!"

_"Grimmjow-san, don't!" _Urahara warned from the background, only to be ignored once again.

Kurosaki's Reiatsu moved to encircle the both of them, so potent that it appeared as something almost tangible; a deadly, writhing halo of black and crimson that snapped at Grimmjow's heels. He yanked hard on the teen's collar and lifted him up to eye-height, the teen's head lolling back like a ragdoll's as he did. The swords that had been laid over his lap clattered noisily to the ground.

"Naptime's over, Kurosaki!" Grimmjow crowed, jostling him back and forth for emphasis. "Enough with the brooding martyr-bullshit! Snap out of it already so I can beat some fucking sense into you!" When that didn't get him the response he wanted, Grimmjow reached out with his free hand and grabbed a fistful of orange hair, using it to yank Ichigo's head forward. "Are you listening to me, asshole?! I said-!"

Kurosaki's eyes shot open, and the world stopped moving. Horribly unnatural, bright yellow irises set against pitch-black sclera, like twin moons adrift in a sea of shadow pinned Grimmjow in place.

**"Y'er loud."**

His voice was two octaves too high. His expression was twisted and wrong.

_This wasn't Kurosaki._

Grimmjow opened his mouth, but no sound came forth other than a single, choked gasp. The larger of Kurosaki's two swords—the giant meat-cleaver that had been lying on the ground not half a second ago—was now sticking straight through Grimmjow's midriff, his Hollow Hole cleanly bisected by the massive blade.

**"King gets cranky when he doesn't get his beauty sleep," **the thing wearing Kurosaki's face purred, its gaze full of savage amusement as Grimmjow's vision blurred. **"You don't wanna wake 'im up, believe me."**

Grimmjow's grip loosened, _Not-_Kurosaki landing on his feet without Grimmjow to hold him up any longer. He tried to back away, but the creature wouldn't let him, and it grabbed a fistful of his jacket to pull him back by.

It felt as if his entire body was about to split in two when the creature yanked him closer, the sword in his stomach slicing him open ever further as Grimmjow was made to slide along its length, straight toward the wider half of the blade.

He couldn't breathe. His lungs wouldn't work.

It hurt. It hurt so goddamn much. Fucking hell _why did it have to hurt so much?!_

**"And yet, ya came all this way just ta see 'im," **_Not-_Kurosaki crooned, baring its teeth in a grin in response to Grimmjow's silent scream. **"It'd be a shame to send ya back home empty-handed." **The creature leaned in closer; the glow of its eyes the last thing Grimmjow saw before the world around him dissolved into a blood-red haze. **"...Why don't ya go and say hi, first?"**

The ground beneath his feet gave way, and then Grimmjow was falling—tumbling helplessly through the scarlet maelstrom that awaited him below. The horrible pressure of the sword inside his gut disappeared and was replaced by a gaping emptiness that was easily just as bad, but at least allowed Grimmjow to vocalize the scream he'd been forced to hold back until now.

For a horrible, nauseating period of time that felt like forever but couldn't have been more than seconds in reality, Grimmjow felt himself being pulled in a million different directions. He lost track of which way was up, his Reiatsu senses going haywire, and right when he felt like he might just throw up for real if it went on any longer, the world snapped back into place.

Except… it wasn't really _the _world. It was _a _world. A world he had never seen before in his life, and one he, nor anyone else barring Kurosaki himself had ever been meant to enter.

Unable to slow his fall in any way, Grimmjow rocketed straight through the pane of glass that had rapidly come up to greet him, and crash-landed smack-dab in the middle of a sideways skyscraper.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

When Grimmjow came to, he found himself laid out on the ground, surrounded by—and partially covered _with_—countless fragments of broken glass.

With a groan and the wall at his back acting as support, he slowly managed to right himself. Every move he made while doing so sent flares of agony shooting up and down his spine, and from the large cracks in the wall, he could make an educated guess as to why.

Once he'd gotten back to his feet, he ran one hand through his hair while using the other to keep his balance, putting pressure on his scalp in the hopes of having it distract him from the awful pounding in his skull. The endeavor was marginally successful. At least the room stopped spinning long enough for him to take in his surroundings.

Which, it turned out, weren't much to write home about. All he saw were four walls, one open doorway leading further inside, and lots of windows that offered a view of other nearby skyscrapers—one of which he'd broken. For a space that literally existed inside another person's soul, it sure was boring.

Grimmjow dusted off his pants and jacket, then ambled over to the broken window with measured steps. Once there, he stuck out his head with the intention of looking down at the ground, only to very quickly learn that there _was_ no actual ground, and that gravity must have been looking the other way while he was still getting his bearings back because _hoo boy _was it ever making up for lost time now.

With a panicked sort of flailing, Grimmjow managed to latch on to the window frame, just managing to hold on as gravity suddenly insisted on going sideways the moment he stuck his head out of the building. As he scrambled to back away again, the laws of physics decided to overlook his earlier transgression, and allowed Grimmjow to fall right back to the floor in an undignified, panting heap.

Just two minutes spent in Kurosaki's inner world and Grimmjow already hated the place with a burning passion.

Driven onward more by sheer frustration than anything else now, Grimmjow made a second go at getting off his ass, and resumed his exploration of the building, staying way the fuck clear of any and all windows this time. He left the empty room behind him, only to find that the hallway outside looked much the same.

There was no furniture to speak of. Dark blue walls lined the wide corridor, and the only sources of light were windows placed at the very ends of the passageway.

Like hell he was going near any of those, again.

He stomped his way down the corridor, the sound of his footfalls reverberating throughout the narrow confines of the enclosed space many times over, then came to an abrupt halt besides a sliding door that seemed to lead deeper into the building.

So far, that door was the only thing he'd encountered in this godforsaken world that wasn't blue. That alone made it something to be suspicious of.

Then again, while his observational skills might have been on point, no one had ever accused Grimmjow of being patient. He yanked the door open so hard it actually bounced partway shut again, but slipped through the gap before it could. When physics didn't decide to be a giant bitch upon his crossing the threshold, Grimmjow patted himself on the back on a decision well-made and cast a look around.

This place wasn't completely barren at least, but it was still _waaay _fucking underwhelming for what was essentially a piece of Kurosaki's soul.

He was in a classroom. An honest-to-god, regular shitty-ass human classroom. The sheer mundanity of it all almost made him want to throw up. There was one thing out of the ordinary, however.

Near the front of the room, several desks were either out of place or knocked over altogether, as if there had been some sort of commotion there. Grimmjow went to take a closer look, walking in between two rows of desks, when he spotted a smudge of black from the corner of his eye. Slowly, he reached out to graze the surface of the desk closest to him, long fingers sliding over a patch of coarse, charred wood, until they covered the blemish there completely.

It was a handprint.

The marking was just a tad smaller than his own hand, but not by much. When he retracted it again, a coating of soot clung to his palm, and Grimmjow smeared it out with his thumb, turning it into a tacky paste when it mixed with his sweat. While Grimmjow couldn't sense any lingering Reiatsu traces from it, he could nevertheless make an educated guess as to who had been responsible for leaving the mark.

A thump sounded from outside while Grimmjow was distracted, and his breath hitched; his entire body stiffening up in an instinctual response as he sharpened his senses.

The sound of heavy footfalls rang throughout the classroom. Something was there, out in the hallway. When he held completely still, Grimmjow could even pick up the sound of something breathing. There wasn't a doubt in his mind: whatever it was, it was coming closer.

On light feet, Grimmjow hurried back over to the side of the room he'd entered from, pressing his back against the wall there. Whatever was stalking through the hallway, Grimmjow would be catching a glimpse of it first, before it could spot him.

The footsteps halted right outside the door. Four pale white, claw-like fingers appeared from the gap Grimmjow had left when the door banged halfway shut again, curling around the wood with four successive _tick tick tick tick_-sounds. The door groaned softly as it slid open.

One stark white foot stepped past the threshold. Two slim horns slid out into Grimmjow's line of sight next. And right behind those, two glowing yellow eyes entered his field of vision; eyes that were staring right at him. The creature had known where he was all along.

Grimmjow didn't hesitate.

He charged it head-on, his sword whipping out in a quicksilver blur aimed at its jugular, but the thing's fingers were even quicker to snap shut around his blade. Grimmjow tugged as hard as he could to pull it free again, but the sword did not budge an inch within the creature's grip. It tilted its head at Grimmjow as he struggled, amusement shining within its eyes.

Grimmjow gritted his teeth. _No-one_ fucking laughed at him.

Crimson energy sparked to life between the fingers of his free hand, and Grimmjow unleashed a point-blank Cero straight at the thing's face, launching himself backwards as soon as its grip slackened.

Desks were barreled aside without a care; Grimmjow backing away until there was nothing separating him from the window behind him. Point-blank hit or not, he knew the thing couldn't have gone down that easily. Grimmjow's attack had not been targeting vulnerable flesh, but a solid bone mask, adorned by twin black streaks like warpaint, instead. And indeed, when the smoke cleared, Grimmjow's pale adversary was still standing right where he'd left it. In fact, it hadn't incurred much more than superficial scratches in the attack.

Time to kick things up a notch, then.

_"Grind!" _Grimmjow snarled, raking his fingers along the length of his blade. _"Pantera!" _A plume of cyan Reiatsu erupted from his sword, washing over the floor and bowling over any desks that had still been standing, and-!

Nothing.

Grimmjow's sealed Hollow powers refused his call.

The blue energy dispersed again, leaving Grimmjow to stare at his weapon in disbelief. A distorted, rasping laughter resounded throughout the ravaged classroom, and Grimmjow prepared to continue the fight without Resurrección when the creature approached, its curtain of long, almost silvery-white hair swaying as it walked.

**"You call that a Cero?"**

Grimmjow's eyes widened. _That voice!_

A maelstrom of crimson energy whirled into existence around the creature's outstretched index finger. **_"This, _****is a Cero."**

_"Fuck!"_

With burning heat and a haze of red at his back, Grimmjow threw himself at the window and out of the classroom not half a second before it exploded into a sea of fire. He spun around helplessly as he plummeted, twinkling embers and bright orange tongues of flame accompanying him on the way down.

This wasn't the same as before—the window he'd jumped from had been facing the _center_ of the skyscraper, not the outside. He couldn't make anything out as he spun and tumbled, but there _had _to be something there to catch him when he hit the bottom. Grimmjow prayed to whatever might be listening that he wouldn't fall straight into the endless nothing he'd glimpsed before.

When he finally did land, Grimmjow landed _hard. _His left shoulder popped out of its socket upon touchdown, his elbow on the same side was scraped bloody, as was most of the skin on both arms, and his headache came back worse than ever when he rang his skull like a bell against the stone floor that greeted him. Nonetheless, Grimmjow had never felt more grateful to find himself on solid ground.

Pieces of burning rubble were still coming down around him, and Grimmjow hurried to limp further away from the hail of fire and debris. He came upon a stairway and followed it further down, every step jostling his dislocated shoulder and causing waves of pain to radiate outward throughout his entire body. When he reached the bottom, he leaned back against a supporting pillar and sank into a crouch, panting in great, heaving puffs.

Once he'd gotten himself somewhat under control again, he squeezed his eyes shut and clenched his jaw hard enough to almost shatter his own teeth, then jerked his shoulder back into its socket with a single, well-practiced motion.

Breathing heavily through his nose, Grimmjow waited for the urge to scream his lungs out from the pain to abate, then slammed his head back into the solid surface behind him and let out a multitude of vicious curses.

Fuck this fucking place. Fuck that smirking, horned asshole that had dragged him in here and then tried to kill him. And more than anything, fuck the total, supreme and utter _bullshit_ that he was looking at right now.

A maze of stairs and pathways going every which way lay sprawled out before him; some horizontal, some vertical, some going sideways or taking sudden ninety-degree turns, and some even trailing off into spirals that shouldn't have gone anywhere at all but somehow _did_, laws of physics and common sense alike be damned.

It was like being inside of a goddamned MC Escher painting, but _worse. _On top of gravity being fucked six ways to Sunday and the fact that he was now horribly lost somewhere in the middle of a godforsaken labyrinth, Grimmjow also had some Minotaur-looking cunt with a sadist streak throwing him out of windows and setting shit on fire.

All this just because Grimmjow wanted to enjoy a good fight for once. He almost wanted to say it just wasn't worth it anymore, but like hell was he giving up now.

He shot back to his feet, glanced about the three different stairways he could take from the platform he found himself on, and decided to ignore all three and jump straight down onto a lower-lying structure, instead.

Fuck playing by this place's rules.

He leapt from one stairway to the next, jumped back and forth between two sets of vertical walls to climb straight upwards, and one time—when he got _really _fed up with all the bullshit—Cero'd himself a path through a physics-defying maze of doors that led somewhere else every time he passed through one.

He could swear he'd even caught a glimpse of _himself _leaving through one door and emerging out another during his third attempt at figuring out how the whole mess was connected.

The further down and into the building's lower levels he went (in as far as there even was a 'down', what with gravity being the way it was), the less sense his surroundings made, and the harder it became to keep heading in the same direction. Almost as if this world itself was doing its utmost to keep Grimmjow from reaching the bottom of the maze.

That was all the incentive he needed to keep going, really. The best-defended place had to be one worth reaching, after all.

After what must have been at least two full hours of different varieties of nonstop mindfuckery—and dear _god _Grimmjow had never thought it possible to feel such hatred towards something inanimate—he finally realized that the hallway he'd been running through for the past fifteen minutes was in fact a never-ending loop, and he'd literally been running in circles for all that time.

After tearing a good chunk of said hallway apart in what was a totally justified and not at all exaggerated bloodrage, Grimmjow discovered a hidden passageway built into the wall, and slipped out of the trap and into a different part of the labyrinth.

For the first time in hours, he arrived somewhere that seemed almost… _stable. _Well, maybe he wouldn't go quite _that_ far, but at least it looked a lot less fucked than everywhere else did.

At first glance, it was just a plain, narrow corridor; one that didn't appear to be hiding any trap doors nor led to two different, entirely disconnected locations depending on whether you were traversing it walking forwards or backwards.

More suspicious than ever by this sudden return to relative normality, Grimmjow took his time exploring, double-checking every nook and cranny for hints of deception. Everything _seemed _to be in order. At least, until he reached the halfway-point and came to a stop beside yet another door that stuck out like a sore thumb amidst all the blue.

This particular door was brown, with a grey handle attached to it that had multiple scratches marring its surface, indicating that it had seen its fair share of use. What stood out most however, was the wooden plaque pinned to its surface; one that had the number '15' written on it.

Fifteen. _Ichi-go. _Grimmjow was pretty sure he knew what he'd find inside.

He barged right on in, and even though his assumption was proven right, he had not been prepared for the heavy, fiery scent of smoke that invaded his nostrils once he opened the door. Opting for caution, he stayed in the open doorway, glancing around the facsimile of what had to be Kurosaki's real-world bedroom.

Nothing seemed to be on fire anymore, but the mattress of Kurosaki's bed was littered with scorch marks, and all that remained of his bedsheets was an assortment of blackened, shredded strips of fabric.

Grimmjow shook his head. Unbelievable. Even when he was sleeping this kid managed to be a living, breathing disaster zone.

He was about to step inside and take a closer look at the damage, when the sound of footsteps drawing nearer had him reconsidering. He gritted his teeth. _God dammit. _Pale, horned and gruesome had finally managed to catch up to him.

It seemed he wouldn't be getting the time to explore, after all.

Making sure to remain light-footed, Grimmjow left the bedroom for what it was and rushed to clear the hallway before his pursuer could get a clear shot at him. It hurt his pride to turn tail and run—and his pride had already taken quite the beating over the course of today—but he knew well enough that he didn't stand a chance against that thing without his Resurrección.

He fled further into the heart of the maze, lacking the time to keep proper track of where he was going and instead just blundering his way through with nothing but the vague intention of going further down.

There were no more open areas; no more platforms to leap to and fro. Instead, the pathways Grimmjow followed grew ever more confined and claustrophobic, forcing him to traverse the labyrinth properly rather than taking any more of his aerial shortcuts. He began to pass more and more doors along the way, over half of which were locked tight by heavy, pitch-black chains.

When he ran past them, Grimmjow swore he could hear voices coming from within; some of which sounded remarkably familiar to his ears. One in particular sounded _intimately _familiar, even. Regardless, he had no time to stop and listen; not with that horned meat grinder all but breathing down his neck.

Only when his legs eventually began to cramp up and his lungs felt as if they were on fire did Grimmjow allow himself to pause. He leaned against a wall for support as he struggled to catch his breath, doing his best to ignore the disembodied whispers that were resounding all throughout the empty hallway he'd chosen to halt in. Unlike with the locked doors he'd passed however, he couldn't make out any individual voices. This sounded more like the din of a large crowd.

A glance to Grimmjow's right revealed that he'd somehow found his way back to the building's periphery: the entire right side of the corridor was lined with large windows, and from where he was standing Grimmjow could see straight into the bland interior of a neighboring skyscraper.

More importantly, assuming that the two buildings had the same number of floors, a glance at the other tower revealed that Grimmjow had made it all the way down to the second floor. Just one more to go, and then he'd find… well, after all the crap he'd gone through just to get this far, he'd better find _something _worthwhile down there.

Emboldened by the knowledge that his goal was almost within reach, Grimmjow made to set off again. As soon as he took a single step forward however, the whispers abruptly cut off, and then…

A deafening roar cut through the ensuing silence—one that couldn't have come from anything but a Hollow out for blood. Grimmjow whirled around, heart pounding away in his throat as he fully expected to get a face full of yellow eyes and a meat cleaver through his guts for his troubles, but was met only with empty air. Instead there came a blinding flash of blue light from behind while Grimmjow's back was still turned, and then, with an ear-rending cacophony, every single window in that hallway was blasted out of its frame and into a million shattered pieces, the whispers from earlier replaced by screams.

Grimmjow remained utterly motionless, not daring to move a muscle as the winds rushing in from outside tugged at his clothes and hair. The phantom cries of fear and panic slowly ebbed away again, sounding more and more distant until only distorted echoes were left. When the last remaining noise was the deafening drum of his own heartbeat, Grimmjow finally allowed himself to unfreeze.

He shuddered out a breath. To hell with all this. First the disheveled classroom, then the burnt bedsheets, and now this fucking horror movie jump scare shit. Kurosaki was a lot more messed up in the head than he'd given the kid credit for if _this_ was the sort of crap that lay hidden in the depths of his inner world.

Once he was sure it was safe, Grimmjow cautiously began to make his way through the ruined hallway, shards of glass crunching underfoot as he went. It wouldn't be much further now. He'd get his answers soon, or so he told himself.

At the end of the corridor, he came upon yet another set of stairs, and followed them down to what he hoped was the ground floor of the tower. He couldn't be _entirely _sure that he'd reached the lowest level, but a first glance of the place sure seemed promising enough.

As soon as he set foot upon the landing, Kurosaki's Reiatsu slammed into him like a tidal wave. The air was saturated with it, and the walls, ceiling and floor were all covered with sprawling blue lines aglow with power, lines that pulsed and thrummed in a rhythmic pattern reminiscent of a heartbeat. They looked a lot like that _Blut _stuff Quincies were so fond of using, and they covered absolutely _everything._

On all the dozens of floors Grimmjow had traversed on his way here, he hadn't sensed so much as a flicker of Kurosaki's Reiatsu. And now, he was practically bathing in it!

All of it was being concentrated here; those _Blut_-lines acting not to spread it around, but to keep it contained instead, Grimmjow could tell. Less a network of veins and arteries, and more the bars of a very large prison cell.

Inoue had been right. No wonder Kurosaki wouldn't wake up; this entire godforsaken labyrinth had been constructed by none other than-!

"You do not belong in this world, Arrancar."

Grimmjow's sword was out of its sheath before the new arrival had even finished speaking. "And who the hell are you?" Grimmjow demanded, sizing the stranger up. He was a very tall, grave-looking man, clad in a deep red coat long enough to almost drag along the floor. Strangely, even though there was no draft to speak of down here, both the man's coat as well as his long, dark hair still moved as if they were being caressed by an invisible breeze.

"I am… a custodian of sorts," the man replied, after a considering pause. The light emitted by the _Blut-_patterns glinted off his sunglasses as he locked eyes with Grimmjow. "I prevent outside influences from trespassing beyond this point."

Grimmjow narrowed his eyes. "…Aren't you leaving something out, there?" he sneered, knowing a half-truth when he heard one. He'd worked for Aizen once, after all. "You're not just here to keep stuff _out, _are you?"

The man's expression did not change. "I act only in accordance with my wielder's wishes," he replied neutrally. His gaze shifted away from Grimmjow. "Speaking of which… why have you brought an outsider here, Hollow?"

**"Who knows?"**

Grimmjow's entire body jerked as if he'd been struck by lightning when he heard that voice so close-by. The horned nightmare came ambling down the stairs behind him, slow as it pleased. It didn't even deign to look at Grimmjow as it approached, and Grimmjow launched himself away from there with Sonido, only stopping when he had a wall to his back and both of those fuckers within his field of vision.

**"Maybe I got bored of bein' on patrol duty," **it snarked, halting once it reached the stairway landing. **"Maybe I just wanted a plaything I could chase around and cut up a bit."**

Despite the fact that they were talking about him, Grimmjow might as well not have existed for all the attention the bizarre pair was paying him.

The man said nothing in response, and allowed the silence to drag on while he stared the Minotaur-looking creature down. He had a distinctly unimpressed air about him.

Several seconds ticked by like that, but eventually the cockiness fled from the pale one's posture. It let out a heavy groan, deflating a bit as it ran a clawed hand through its own hair in irritation.

**"Pain-in-the-ass old man," **it scoffed. **"Look, I know this ain't what King wants. But you and I both know that what he ****_wants_**** ain't necessarily what's best for 'im. Or do ya think that keeping things the way they are is gonna do 'im any fucking good?" **The creature's yellow irises began to glow, and Grimmjow's nonexistent stomach bottomed out as the Reiatsu all around him grew more oppressive; as if a slumbering predator had just been awoken.

**"We've given 'im long enough; he ****_failed. _****Now it's our turn."**

The red-clad one looked to Grimmjow, showing that he hadn't been forgotten after all. "And _this_ is your solution?" he asked.

**"It beats doin' nothing," **the Minotaur sneered. **"You and I both know where this road leads if we keep sitting on our asses, Old Man."**

There was another pause, but then the 'Old Man' closed his eyes and let out a weary sigh. "…Very well. Do as you will." Without another word, he made a quarter-turn so that he was facing the wall beside him, and Grimmjow boggled when the man's shadow suddenly came alive, shifting like liquid as it painted a portion of said wall black. Then, as if it was the most ordinary thing in the world, the man stepped into that inky darkness and disappeared, the shadow receding again as soon as the end of his coat-tail had slipped through.

**"Hear that, ****_Koneko-chan?"_**

Grimmjow bristled at the nickname, but dared not respond; not when those eerie yellow eyes had him all but enthralled. The Minotaur's bone Mask may have been incapable of producing any expressions, but in that moment Grimmjow could have easily imagined its teeth curving into a wicked grin.

**"The Old Man just approved our little play-date." **The Minotaur whipped out its arm, and in a blur of pitch-black Reiatsu, the very same oversized meat cleaver that had run Grimmjow through materialized in his hand. It tilted its head at him. **"Well?" **it taunted Grimmjow. **"What are ya waitin' for?" **It gestured toward the passageway the Old Man had been guarding. **"I thought ya wanted to reach the goal? Go on then; I'll even let ya have a head start."**

Grimmjow gritted his teeth hard, his facial muscles quivering out of sheer, barely-restrained fury at being openly toyed with. His sword trembled in his grip, and it was taking every single shred of self-preservation Grimmjow had in him to keep himself from using it, but in the end, common sense managed to prevail.

Letting out an impotent snarl, Grimmjow tore his gaze away from the Minotaur and charged down that passageway like the devil himself was hot on his heels. He threw himself against walls when turning corners just to save precious seconds, and never even thought twice about how he would be traversing the maze, instead hoping that if he got _himself_ lost first, he might just manage to lose his pursuer as well.

Unfortunately for him, that plan didn't work out too well.

Just as Grimmjow was rounding the umpteenth corner, a white blur materialized from a connecting passageway, and it was all Grimmjow could do to deflect that oversized blade with his own. The force of the impact surged up along his arm and left the entire limb numb, and his sword went skittering over the stone floor. Grimmjow dove after it, simultaneously picking it up while kicking off against the Minotaur's calf with his boot to launch into Sonido, but wasn't quite fast enough to prevent the tip of the Minotaur's sword from taking a slice out of his back.

It missed his spine, thankfully, but judging by the pain, the bastard had definitely managed to nick some muscle.

Grimmjow redoubled his pace, very much aware that his jacket was becoming soaked through with blood as he went, but kept on pumping his legs regardless of how badly they were starting to cramp, and how difficult it was becoming to breathe.

He staggered out of the corridor and into a more open area, frantically scanning the room for where he could go next, when he noticed that something was different about the _Blut-_lines here.

They'd been ever-present in the background this whole time, but here, they were clearly thicker and far numerous than anywhere else he'd been so far. Most importantly of all: they all originated from the same tunnel.

There wasn't a doubt in Grimmjow's mind. _That _was where he needed to go!

He set off with renewed determination, giving everything he had for that final sprint to the metaphorical finish line, when a shadow fell over him and Grimmjow's blood froze in his veins.

**"Gotcha."**

Grimmjow raised his sword to block, but it was too slow; the blade held in too awkward a position.

The far heavier meat cleaver batted Grimmjow's own Zanpakutou aside with childlike ease and whirred through the air with startling elegance for such a large weapon. Grimmjow felt the air current it kicked up tickle his bare cheek, moments before a sharp sting of pain made him realize the sword had sliced the top half of his ear open. He could feel the two halves of his ear shell moving separately and painfully rubbing against each other as he stumbled, but that pain was fast replaced by something even worse when the Minotaur planted a pale white foot squarely in the center of his chest.

Both the wind and some less appetizing stuff was knocked right out of him, and Grimmjow went flying through the tunnel, landing a good few dozen meters away from where he'd been before. By his count, he'd broken at least three ribs and bruised more than one of his internal organs.

He spat a mouthful of blood onto the formerly pristine white floor, then clenched his jaw. He'd have time to feel pain later. Right now, he had to get the hell away from that asshole Hollow with the dissection fetish.

Moving far quicker than was wise with his injuries, Grimmjow jumped back to his feet and went straight into Sonido. His surroundings were reduced to a white-and-blue blur and Grimmjow could barely breathe—as much due to the earlier kick in the ribs as due to the air blowing right in his face at these speeds—but regardless of how fast he might have been going, he _still _sensed his pursuer just three steps behind him.

Grimmjow noticed the tunnel growing wider as they went.

_Two steps._

He could just start to make out something in the distance.

_One step._

It was a heavy set of double doors, opened just a crack.

_The Minotaur's clawed fingers brushed against his jacket's collar._

Moving at full speed, Grimmjow rammed the doors open with his shoulder, swearing he could hear something pop out of place on impact and scraping his jawbone Mask Fragment against the door when his continued momentum made him bash his head against it.

And then he was through.

He fell to the ground, rolling onto has back and looking behind him to see-!

Nothing. The Minotaur had disappeared without a trace. He'd made it.

Flooded with relief, Grimmjow let his head fall back as he finally got the chance to catch his breath. At least, until a familiar voice broke through the silence and startled Grimmjow into his latest near-heart attack of the day.

_"Grimmjow?!"_

Briefly flopping around like a tortoise on its back, Grimmjow nonetheless managed to reorient himself enough to look a flabbergasted Kurosaki in the eye.

"How—why are you—what are you _doing here?!" _the teen demanded, looking about as stunned as Grimmjow himself felt.

For a full ten seconds, Grimmjow just stared at him as he tried to remember how to form words. "Kurosaki…" he finally croaked out, and Kurosaki came closer, straining to understand him, weak as his voice was.

"How the hell did you get in here?" Kurosaki asked, hesitantly reaching out to help keep him upright; seeming unsure of whether any assistance he offered would be taken in thanks by Grimmjow.

"I… I came to…" The words got stuck in his throat, and Grimmjow unsuccessfully worked his jaw to try and force them out. Kurosaki came even closer, clearly eager to hear whatever pearls of wisdom Grimmjow was trying to share with him.

The face he made when Grimmjow threw up all over his shoes instead _almost_ made getting stabbed worth it.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

Grimmjow could almost hear an imaginary clock ticking away as he and Kurosaki leered at each other from opposite sides of the room.

"So, what?" Grimmjow broke the oppressive silence, "We just gonna sit here and fucking _pout _at each other 'till one of us keels over?" When the only reaction Kurosaki gave was a further deepening scowl, Grimmjow's already-limited patience ran out. "Say something, shithead!"

Finally, Kurosaki's head snapped up. "You _threw up, _on my freaking _shoes!" _he yelled, gesturing at his now-bare feet.

"You're _still_ bitching about that? Besides, your asshole subconscious just tried to freaking _murder_ me!" Grimmjow screamed back. "I think I win this one!"

"How the hell did you even get in here in the first place?!" Kurosaki demanded, pointing an accusing finger at Grimmjow as he jumped straight onto that new line of inquiry, probably knowing full well that he wasn't about to claim moral superiority. "This is my _inner world!"_

"Exactly! This entire goddamned insane asylum is _inside your head!" _Grimmjow ranted, gesturing wildly at their surroundings. "I always figured you had a few screws loose, but what the shit, Kurosaki?!"

Kurosaki recoiled at that, just a little bit, and when he averted his gaze to the side Grimmjow began listing off the greatest hits of crazy shit he'd come across during his descent. "There's stairs that don't actually go anywhere, invisible assholes whispering from behind chained-shut doors, an empty hallway that first exploded and then _screamed _at me, and—oh! Before I forget! Did you actually set your own bed on fire while you were _in it?!"_

Kurosaki pulled in his long legs and wrapped both arms around his knees. "…It wasn't actually on fire," he mumbled mulishly into his shirt sleeves, still refusing to meet Grimmjow's eyes. "My Reiatsu just… singed the sheets a bit."

Grimmjow slumped back against the wall. "Holy fucking shit," he muttered. "Inoue actually got it right, didn't she?" He shook his head in disbelief. "You dumb asshole. You went and locked yourself in here on purpose."

"It wasn't on purpose!" Kurosaki was quick to deny, though he slumped in on himself again after the outburst. "…Not at first, at least."

Grimmjow sighed and squeezed his eyes shut, pressing the back of his skull against the wall in an attempt to distract himself from his incoming headache. "Alright," he groaned out, still refusing to open his eyes and actually look at the dumbfuck in front of him. "Walk me through it."

"…What do you even care?" Kurosaki muttered, so demurely that Grimmjow could practically _hear_ the pout.

"I just had some pale, horned cunt with a hard-on for violence chase me around the absolute _bullshit _that is this world for hours on end. Color me intrigued."

"I'm surprised you two didn't get along, given how much you've got in common," Kurosaki grumbled, then sighed in reluctant acquiescence. "It… it started happening right after the whole Quincy War-thing," he began to explain. "By the time I'd gotten strong enough to beat Yhwach, I'd already hit a point where the human world just... couldn't handle having me in it anymore. Whenever I lost control of my Reiatsu, or even just let my focus slip for a second… well, you saw what happened to my bedroom."

"So, what? That bedsheet-confetti I saw wasn't you going pyro, but just… fucking Reiatsu incontinence?" The indignant squawk Kurosaki let out in response to that had Grimmjow's lips curling into a smirk, but the sounds of shuffling around that followed had him opening his eyes, just in time to see a puke-stained sneaker flying at his face. He dodged, then barked out a laugh when it harmlessly sailed into the wall. "Seriously. You're like a superpowered, bedwetting toddler."

The other shoe followed in its twin's footsteps, and this one Grimmjow snatched out of the air, promptly tossing it aside when the smell of fresh vomit hit him. When a beet-faced Kurosaki plopped himself right back down on the ground and stubbornly crossed his arms in front of his chest, Grimmjow sighed and rolled his eyes. "Oh, don't go back to _pouting," _he sneered. "I got stabbed, thrown out of a building, and had my hand turned into ground meat by that girlfriend of yours—all in a single goddamned day!—but you don't see me being a little bitch about it."

Kurosaki's scowl alone could have struck a lesser man dead just then, but despite his obvious reluctance to talk to Grimmjow any longer than he already had, he still managed to bite out: "_What_ girlfriend? What are you talking about?"

"The ditz with the giant knockers, obviously. Why; you got any others running around besides her?"

"O-Orihime isn't my girlfriend!" Kurosaki sputtered out, the look on his face suggesting that the idea of a romantic relationship was some bizarre, alien concept to him. "And no, I don't _'have any others running around', _what the hell is wrong with you?!"

For the first time since the conversation had begun, Grimmjow found himself genuinely surprised. "What, you turned her down?" he asked, only getting further stumped when Kurosaki's brows furrowed. "…Oh no. You cannot _seriously_ be this fucking dense."

Kurosaki stared at him for a distressingly long period of time. "I… what?" he finally asked, and Grimmjow felt his level of respect for the clueless teen go into freefall.

"…No wonder she got violent," Grimmjow muttered to himself, then grabbed the nearest of Kurosaki's discarded sneakers and almost casually hurled it back at him. "You know what, fuck your shitty love life. Tell me more about how you got your dumb ass locked in here."

Ichigo caught the shoe, wrinkling his nose at it and quickly tossing it aside before going back to glaring. When said glare proved ineffectual, Kurosaki clicked his tongue and ran his fingers through his spikes in an agitated manner. "It wasn't _just_ my bedsheets, you know. It was other stuff, too. Small stuff, at first; like… blowing up a football at soccer practice. Stuff that didn't really matter." He cast his gaze downward. "…But it got worse."

The screams Grimmjow had heard in the hallway above them came to mind.

"I was starting to actually hurt people," Kurosaki muttered, hanging his head. "I… I couldn't keep going on like that. I couldn't stay in the world of the living; much less stay around my sisters if I didn't get my powers under control."

Grimmjow leaned forward a bit, resting his elbow atop his raised knee. "…So what'd you do?"

"I trained. Asked Urahara to help me even, which I _knew_ he'd make me pay out the ass for later." He let out a self-deprecating little laugh. "He and Tessai started by teaching me Kido—they thought it might help me learn some control."

"I'm guessing _that_ turned out to be a crapshoot."

Kurosaki chuckled again. "Yeah. You could say that." He held out both his hands, looking down at his open palms. "The more I tried to put a damper on my Reiatsu output, the harder it got to keep it from lashing out again, and tearing apart everything around me. I tried so hard to turn that flow of power inward again; tried to smush it all into this tiny little ball deep inside of me and lock it all away, and-!"

He met Grimmjow's eyes for just a second, leaving Grimmjow shocked at the open vulnerability he was seeing there, then hurried to avert his gaze again. "…And it actually worked," Kurosaki finished, much more subdued now. "I'd completely sealed my Reiatsu off from the outside world. Only problem was…"

"You'd locked yourself away at the same time," Grimmjow inferred.

Kurosaki nodded. "When I opened my eyes, I was in here. Well, not _here, _here," Kurosaki corrected. "At first the place still looked normal. It took a while before it turned into this… _bullshit insane asylum,"_ he quoted Grimmjow, with just a hint of a smirk.

Grimmjow's own lip twitched as he fought off an answering grin. "And you couldn't get back out again, huh?"

"Oh no, I could," Kurosaki answered him easily, making Grimmjow do the mental equivalent of a double take. "But I knew that if I did, I'd just be right back where I started. I figured I'd stay here until I worked out how to leave again _without_ blowing up Urahara's basement."

"So… when you _didn't _work it out, you just… stayed here?" Grimmjow stammered out.

Kurosaki shrugged. "At least I wasn't hurting anyone this way."

The matter-of-fact tone in which he said it gave Grimmjow the irrational urge to start banging his own head into the wall behind him. "I… You…" Grimmjow began to stammer, the sheer _idiocy _of it all leaving him unable to form words. "You're so goddamn stupid it actually makes me want to hurt myself."

_"Oi." _Kurosaki's tentative good mood evaporated all at once, his scowl returning in full force. "I know _you_ don't give a shit about what happens to anyone but yourself, but I actually have people I care about!"

"This ain't about me _or_ about protecting any poor, fragile little humans, Kurosaki!" Grimmjow snapped back at him. "This is about you and that fucking martyr complex of yours! There's a million other ways you could have handled this shit! _Better _ways!"

He got to his feet, Kurosaki rising along with him and getting into a defensive stance. "You could have stayed with your dumbfuck friends in Soul Society while you were sorting this shit out! You could have taken your little posse and gone off to dick around in the middle of nowhere where there weren't any weaklings to hurt! Hell, even running off to Hueco Mundo to go hide under a fucking rock would have been better than this!"

"But _no!" _Grimmjow ranted, making a dramatic sweeping motion with his arm. "You thought it was a better idea to let yourself get so goddamn pent up that you were literally about to burst before you finally called in some help, and even then you _still_ tried to solve the problem all on your own in the end!"

Kurosaki seemed to have frozen in place, stuck between indignation and embarrassment as Grimmjow continued to hit the nail right on the head. "All because you just _have_ to be the big goddamn hero. Every time something goes wrong you really do think it's all up to you to fix it, don't you? Just like when the girl got herself kidnapped and you and your friends stormed Hueco Mundo completely unprepared, like a pack of morons. How the hell you're all still alive is beyond me."

Resting one hand atop his sword hilt, Grimmjow began to wander over Kurosaki's side of the room. "But let me tell you something, Kurosaki. What you're doing now? This whole self-sacrificing bullshit you've got going on here? Ain't nothing heroic about it."

He halted only once he was directly in front of the teen and could look down his nose at him. "You're just a brat who's so far up his own ass he actually went and got himself stuck."

Kurosaki clenched his fists, eyes spitting fire and literally shaking where he stood from sheer rage, but this time Grimmjow didn't even find any enjoyment in seeing the kid's turmoil. "What's wrong?" he sneered while leaning in even closer to Kurosaki's face, "Feeling too self-righteous to throw the first punch?"

The scraping of steel sounded as Pantera was liberated from its sheath. "…Let me make this easy for you, then."

Grimmjow's blade whipped out; little more than a quicksilver blur that was heading straight for Kurosaki's center-of-mass, but it was deflected by a familiar, sword-shaped slab of metal.

"You don't want to do this Grimmjow," Kurosaki warned, even if the tenseness in his posture indicated anything but a desire to stop. His hand didn't even shake as he held Grimmjow's sword at bay with that oversized meat cleaver he called a Zanpakuto.

Kurosaki had pulled the weapon out of thin air; the damned thing materializing in a haze of darkness just instants before their swords clashed. "This is _my_ world. You can't beat me in here."

Grimmjow's lips curved into a smirk. "We'll see about that," he grunted out, then backed away a few steps and readied himself for a second strike. "I came here for the fight you promised me and one way or another, I'm gonna collect, Kurosaki!"

"…Fine then."

Grimmjow startled when a rush of energy shot up his sword-bearing arm and then right back down the length of his spine, his skin breaking out in goosebumps as a familiar, animalistic roaring echoed in the back of his mind. His eyes widened.

_His power was back._

"I don't need a handicap to wipe the floor wipe with you," Kurosaki stated, his voice a full octave lower than it usually was now that Grimmjow had gotten him good and pissed, and Grimmjow would be lying if he said it didn't get his blood pumping faster with anticipation. "Just don't blame me if I end up killing you by accident."

Grimmjow threw his head back and laughed. "That's it, Kurosaki!" he cheered. _"Those _are the eyes I wanted to see!"

Kurosaki's steely, determined gaze didn't waver when Grimmjow began shifting his weight from one foot to the other, all but hopping in place. The kid was a fucking _monster _now, Grimmjow knew that very well. He had to be, to have stood a chance against that Quincy emperor. And now that he had access to his Resurrección again… Grimmjow meant to find out how he measured up to that kind of overwhelming power.

He bent his knees, coiling up like a spring as his muscles pulled taut. "Show me what you can do," he muttered, drawing just the smallest sliver of power from Pantera, and destroying the floor beneath his clawed feet when he kicked off with two transformed, feline legs.

He crossed the length of the room in a fraction of a second, Kurosaki's eyes widening just the slightest amount in surprise, but again his sword moved with impossible speed and grace for something so massive and intercepted Grimmjow's blow. Grimmjow was internally gratified to see him using both hands this time, even if his broken ribs did not take kindly to the impact.

_"Getsuga…"_

His eager smirk didn't stay on his face for long, however, when he heard the words being spoken.

_"…Tenshou."_

A torrent of inky darkness burst forth from Kurosaki's blade, and Grimmjow just managed to keep himself from being flung into the wall by drawing deep grooves into the floor with his claws. A trail of warm blood began to seep from a gash in his temple, and once he came to a stop, he hurried to wipe it away before it could get into his eye.

It was a good thing he hadn't overdressed, Grimmjow thought to himself, bemused. Not even a minute into the fight, and his jacket was already in tatters. He ripped apart what was left of it and flung the bloodied rag to the ground, not surprised to see a diagonal strip of torn skin crossing the original scar Kurosaki had left him when he looked down at his bare chest.

"That was new." In contrast to Grimmjow himself, Kurosaki had actually gotten _more _clothed during the altercation. The dark Reiatsu emitted by his _Getsuga _coiled around his body like shadowy serpents, revealing a full set of heavy, black Shinigami robes when they dispersed again. "I didn't know you could do a partial transformation."

Grimmjow spat onto the ground. "There's a lot you don't know about me, Kurosaki." He raised his sword to chest height and held it up horizontally, placing the nails of his left hand against the flat of the blade.

"…Yeah," Kurosaki allowed. "I think I'm starting to get that."

Grimmjow smirked. "Grind! _Pantera!"_

A vortex of power enveloped Grimmjow as the rest of his body changed shape to match his werecat-like legs and feet. His fractured ribs and other minor injuries were mended during the transformation, and _finally _Grimmjow felt like he could breathe again. "Let me show you what else is new!" he called out in elation, dashing through the blue haze of his own Reiatsu and leading with the brightly-glowing claws of his right hand. _"Desgarron!"_

Kurosaki held up his cleaver to block, azure energy trails leaving deep gouges behind in the metal and forcing the blade to dip down from the pressure of the attack. Grimmjow bared a mouthful of sharpened fangs, letting out a triumphant cry when he spotted an opening to strike at.

He didn't hesitate, syphoning Spirit Energy into his left arm this time and making to tear out the kid's throat with a second close-range _Desgarron_, only to be forced back yet again just as his nails had started to sink into vulnerable flesh. This time however, it wasn't a plume of inky darkness, but arcs of pure white energy much like lightning that left him with no choice but to disengage. At least he managed to touch down in a much more dignified manner when he hit the ground this time around.

When Kurosaki became visible again, there was a second, much-shorter blade held in his left hand; clearly a twin to the cleaver in his right despite their difference in size. All along the surface of Kurosaki's skin, glowing blue markings now danced around, spreading out in a vein-like pattern. The four cuts Grimmjow had started to make just below Kurosaki's collarbone and traveling up toward his neck abruptly cut off, as if his skin had suddenly become impenetrable halfway through Grimmjow's attack.

_Blut Vene. _More Quincy bullshit. It should have pissed Grimmjow off something fierce, but…

"Well, look at that," Grimmjow taunted, a feeling of satisfaction welling up within him. "I made you get serious after all."

Kurosaki frowned, the ground beneath their feet lightly trembling as pieces of the ceiling began to come down. The glowing blue lines that had been sprawling over the room's walls and ceiling had now disappeared; all of the energy they had kept circulating throughout the labyrinth reclaimed by Kurosaki when he fended off Grimmjow's attack.

"And you finally figured out how to use your best move properly," Kurosaki goaded him right back, looking down at the weeping scratches on his chest. "The hell were you thinking, making it that big during our last fight? _Of course _I could cut right through it; only a fifth of it was actually hitting me!"

Grimmjow felt the large vein in his temple begin to throb even as more debris landed not five feet away from him. "Oh, you are the absolute _last _fucking person I wanna hear bitching at me about wasteful attacks! Tell me; you blow up any basements lately?!"

Kurosaki's eye twitched, the answering grin he shot Grimmjow's way having a somewhat manic tinge to it. "Not for about two weeks," he got out from between clenched teeth. "So if anything…" He planted the cleaver into the ground, using his newly-freed hand to gather up energy into a cross-shape. "…This is probably overdue."

Grimmjow had a full ten seconds to regret the decisions that had led him to this point. "…You sure you wanna shoot that thing in here?" he tried. "Aren't we inside your soul or some shit?"

The arms of the cross-shape in Kurosaki's hands bent at a ninety-degree angle, forming a symbol identical to his Bankai's cross guard. "What do I care?" Kurosaki asked facetiously, first jabbing his short sword into the center of the cross, then pulling it back like he was nocking an incredibly oversized arrow. "I've got this whole 'martyr complex'-thing going anyway, remember?!"

"…You can be _such_ a little bitch," Grimmjow complained, only realizing too late that those might just end up being his last words.

A streak of blinding white light tore through the space between them, and then a burst of searing heat and pure concussive force sent Grimmjow skidding and rolling over the damaged, uneven floor; jagged pieces of upturned stone slicing him up some more before he finally came to a stop. When he did, he managed to dredge up just enough effort to raise his head and check that his guts were all still inside of him, before letting himself plop right back down, all spread eagle and not a single fuck left to give.

"Just so you know," he croaked out, feeling like every other word he spoke was sending flames rushing up along the lining of his throat, "You can't aim for shit, either."

"I missed on purpose, jackass." A head of orange spikes appeared in Grimmjow's field of vision, followed by a socked-and-sandaled foot prodding him in the shoulder. "I take it you're still alive, then?"

"Go… eat a dick, Kurosaki."

"What, yours? I'll pass on that, thanks."

Grimmjow huffed out a laugh, then groaned from the pain that doing so caused. "Wasn't offering, shithead. I knew you were pent up, but _damn. _'Suppose it makes sense, after what you told me earlier."

"Oh fuck yo—_shut up."_

"You're so easy," Grimmjow chuckled, then laughed louder when he realized the double meaning.

Kurosaki groaned, dragging a hand down his beet-red face. "This is not happening," he muttered. "Not here. Not with you of all people. You can't have lost enough blood to be _this _loopy yet."

Grimmjow opened his mouth, probably to say something else of questionable intelligence—god _damn _that sword-arrow had had some real kick behind it, to make him spout off crap like this—when the room they were in began to shake once more, much more violently than it had before.

Kurosaki swore as the tremulous sound of concrete rupturing reached their ears, and before Grimmjow's addled mind could even think to move, the teen was already throwing himself down on top of him. His arms formed a protective barrier around Grimmjow's head, and when the room collapsed and titanic chunks of rubble came crashing down upon the two of them, it was Kurosaki's strong back that stopped them from squashing Grimmjow into paste.

"You okay?" Kurosaki had the audacity to ask, when he was the one holding an entire building's worth of rubble up all on his own. "What the hell was that?"

"Sounded to me like fifty floors of bullshit crashing down on us," Grimmjow muttered, voice coming out a lot more dazed than he had intended it to. Kurosaki looked down at him, both of them startling when the movement caused their noses to brush against each other. It was only then that Grimmjow really came to appreciate just how _exceedingly _close the two of them were squished together right now, and if the look on his face was any indication, Kurosaki had arrived at the same conclusion.

He swallowed rather noticeably, which was still more than what Grimmjow's exhausted brain could come up with; namely to freeze up completely and stare at the kid like he was a deer in headlights.

"Err, just ah—hold still for a bit," Kurosaki stammered out. "I—I'll get rid of this stuff."

"H-how are you gonna-?" Grimmjow started to ask, only to be nailed to the ground entirely when Kurosaki unleashed his insane Reiatsu—a maelstrom of black and blue energy that lashed out and reduced several metric tons of rubble to dust in an instant. "Oh. That works," he uttered dumbly, still staring at Kurosaki with wide eyes.

The kid's blush was more obvious than ever now there wasn't fifty floors worth of crap blocking the light, but he still managed to pull off a teasing smirk. "You sure that blood loss isn't getting to your head after all?"

"You sure _your _blood ain't rushing off somewhere it ain't supposed to be?" Grimmjow fired back, feeling rather proud of himself for thinking that one up when he was so exhausted he could barely move.

_"Oh my god," _Kurosaki groaned out, hurrying to roll off of him and get back to his feet.

Grimmjow snickered to himself, then carefully took a deep breath; gratified to find that doing so didn't hurt much anymore. He may not have been a Regenerator like Ulquiorra, but he still healed pretty fast when he got a chance to rest. "That classroom," Grimmjow called out after Ichigo, not quite feeling up to moving just yet. "The one with the handprint on the desk. What happened there?"

Kurosaki looked back at him, gaze softening as he let out a weary sigh. "That… was the first time I actually hurt someone," he admitted. "It was just… y'know, _class. _Same old, boring stuff as always. All I did was let my mind wander for a bit, and…" Kurosaki let his head hang low in shame. "…Next thing I knew, people were passing out left and right, and the ones who weren't were freaking the hell out. My friends tried to calm me down, but once I realized what was happening… that it was _me _who was causing it…"

"…You ran away," Grimmjow finished for him. Sometimes, the kid was blatantly obvious to read. "For once, you got faced with a problem you couldn't just fight head-on, so you didn't know what the fuck else to do, did you?"

Kurosaki let out a self-deprecating little laugh. "You're not even wrong. I ran all the way to the riverbank and stayed there the rest of the day. Missed my exam, too. And well, after skipping that one, flunking the rest of them didn't seem like all that big a deal anymore. I couldn't go back to school, so I just hung around town during the day for the rest of the week, until…"

"That hallway," Grimmjow muttered. "The shattering windows, the screams…"

"What?" Kurosaki looked back up at him in confusion. "What hallway? There was never a—_oh." _Understanding came over him. "That's what it must have looked like to you, up in the labyrinth. The real thing didn't actually happen in a hallway though—it happened outside, in a busy shopping street in Karakura. You know, big glass windowfronts all around you."

"That first scream I heard," Grimmjow thought aloud, relieved to find that his mental faculties were slowly coming back to him, "That was a Hollow arriving in the Living World. And then, that flash of light, that must have been-!"

It all clicked into place.

Despite his body's protests, Grimmjow got himself up into a sitting position. "…That was you, turning into a Shinigami so you could go kill it. But when you transformed..."

"I pretty much blew up the street, yeah," he admitted, smiling in a way that made it clear he was only doing so because he didn't know what else he could possibly do. "I—I didn't stay there, after, because I was afraid I'd just make things even worse if I did, but—_god!" _He covered his face with both hands. "I must have sent at least a dozen people to the hospital, if not more! For all I know, I might have even—!" He let out a choked-off sob. "I might have even _killed_ someone!"

Grimmjow sighed, shaking his head. Truth was, he didn't _care_ about whether or not some random humans had gotten blown to shit, but…

"Lemme guess," he started to say, "You felt so goddamn guilty about something you _might _have done, that it was easier to just sit here and sulk like a fucking brat instead of going out to face the music."

He paused for a moment to give Kurosaki a chance to respond, but when he didn't even try to deny it, Grimmjow sneered in disgust. "You wanna know what your biggest problem is, Kurosaki? It's not the wannabe hero-thing _or _the martyr-bullshit. It's that you never fucking _think!"_

Grimmjow stumbled when he made to get himself back upright, but the sheer frustration fueling him allowed him to power through the residual pain and wooziness from the fight. "You've got the entirety of the afterlife in your debt twice over, some underground mad scientist who managed to outsmart fucking _Aizen _on your side, and then there's still that not-girlfriend of yours who can _raise the goddamned dead!"_

"So let's say, for argument's sake, that you _did _blow some granny to bits," Grimmjow continued his rant, so invested in it at this point that he didn't even notice Kurosaki's almost comically horrified expression. "Do you really think, for even a second, that all of those people are just gonna sit on their asses and do nothing when they know full well what a self-sacrificing basket case you are?!"

Breathing heavily, Grimmjow limped over to Kurosaki and plopped a hand down on his head, making sure to dig his claws into the numbskull's scalp a bit while he was at it. "You keep forgetting you're not on your own, you lucky piece of shit," Grimmjow admonished him, all while shaking him back and forth by the head. He ignored Kurosaki's halfhearted attempts at fending him off for a little while, then let go without warning, giving him a good shove backwards when he did. "For someone who'd bend over backwards to help out just about any random prick that asked nicely, you're shockingly self-centered."

Kurosaki _just _managed to keep himself from falling flat on his ass, then looked down at the ground as he awkwardly scratched his cheek. "You know… in a really, _really _messed up kind of way," he started to mutter, looking appropriately chastised. "…I think that's the nicest thing you've ever said to me."

"Oh, blow it out your ass," Grimmjow grunted dismissively, rolling his eyes to cover for the smirk that was tugging at his lips. He gazed up at the hole in the ceiling and whistled upon seeing the devastation that had spread all the way to the tower's upper levels.

"That prison of yours is looking pretty damn broken to me," Grimmjow pointed out. "That mean you're ready to get the hell out of here, finally?"

"I… yeah. I think I am. Well, almost." When Grimmjow raised a questioning eyebrow at him, Kurosaki smiled wryly. "We can't exactly stroll out of the labyrinth without passing its guardian," he explained, pulling his meat cleaver of a Zanpakutou out of the floor and 'sheathing' it on his back.

"Ah, _fuck," _Grimmjow groaned out. He wrapped one arm around the left side of his waist, where the heat radiated by Kurosaki's sword-arrow had melted his Resurrección's armor plating. Under any other circumstances, he'd be jumping at the chance for a rematch with that horned son of a bitch; just maybe not less than five minutes after Kurosaki had already handed him his own ass on a silver platter.

While he was still lost in thought Kurosaki suddenly reached for his free hand, Grimmjow's brain short-circuiting when their fingers became linked, only to realize that Kurosaki was just trying to throw his arm over his own shoulder to help Grimmjow walk.

"Fuck off; I'm fine!" Grimmjow snapped at him, doing his best to yank his arm back. Kurosaki however, who—as it turned out—was a _hell_ of a lot stronger than he looked with those skinny arms of his, wouldn't let him.

"After that thirty-minute lecture you just gave me? I don't think so," Kurosaki grunted, stubbornly hiking Grimmjow's arm up a bit further and dragging him along. "Learn to accept some help when it's being offered, you massive freaking hypocrite."

Grimmjow ground his teeth in irritation, but realized there was little he could say to that; not without shitting all over his own argument, at least. To that end, he grudgingly allowed himself to be half-carried by Kurosaki as they plodded through the partly-collapsed tunnel Grimmjow had originally entered from.

"I just realized," Kurosaki spoke up again about halfway through the tunnel, breaking the silence Grimmjow had been so stubbornly determined to maintain. "I never actually got around to saying it, when we met up again during the war."

Curious in spite of himself, Grimmjow turned to look at Kurosaki. Kurosaki wasn't looking at him though: Kurosaki was looking straight ahead, a vibrancy in his eyes that Grimmjow had never seen there before and an honest-to-god smile on his lips.

"I was worried, you know. All those months after the Winter War where nobody seemed to know if you were dead or alive… I was afraid I'd left you behind to die, when I went rushing after Orihime the way I did. So let me say it now." Only then did Kurosaki meet his eyes; that too-bright smile of his not diminishing in the slightest. "I'm glad you're alive, Grimmjow. And I'm glad you're here. It's kinda nice, having someone around who's not afraid to call me out on my shit. So thanks, for that." He unhooked Grimmjow's arm from around his neck. "Now stay back for a bit. This is between me and him."

Whatever Grimmjow had been about to say was swiftly pushed to the back of his mind when he noticed he was being leered at by a familiar pair of yellow eyes.

**"Good job, ****_Koneko-chan," _**the Minotaur purred, the razor-sharp tips of his talons producing soft 'clicks' with every one of his footfalls as he drew nearer. **"Didn't even take you half an hour to drag King out of there. I should have stabbed ya sooner."**

Even though the expression of his Mask couldn't change, Grimmjow still saw the Minotaur's mood shift through his eyes alone. **"…Now get out," **he commanded, brandishing his butcher's blade. **"You don't belong in this world."**

The creature made to step closer, but Kurosaki interspersed himself between them, protectively holding his own inverted-color copy of the blade in front of Grimmjow. "That's enough, Zangetsu," he stated, voice firm. "I won't let you hurt him again."

For the first time, the Zanpakutou Spirit actually deigned to regard its own wielder. **"What, y'er protecting 'im now?" **'Zangetsu' sneered. **"And you think you can just order me around, after that pathetic display these past few weeks?" **The Minotaur's eyes glowed, tiny arcs of red energy crackling between his horns as he raised his Reiatsu. **"I told ya, didn't I? That as soon as ya showed even a hint of weakness, I'd be takin' over again? Y'er looking pretty damn weak to me right now, ****_'King'."_**

Just as Grimmjow started to think that they'd forgotten about him, Zangetsu lunged for him; the Minotaur moving so fast that he was little more than a white blur to Grimmjow's eyes, one that was intercepted by a somehow even faster Kurosaki.

The two of them clashed; three, four times in the time it took Grimmjow just to _blink. _Their bladework was like nothing Grimmjow had ever seen: a fighting style that focused on high-powered strikes that left sparks streaking through the air every time their massive weapons collided, yet still possessed an elegance that should have been wholly out of place for blades of that size.

With a flash of red light, a Cero crackled to life between the Minotaur's horns, and before Grimmjow could think to react the death ray was already headed toward him, but it still arrived a distant second to Kurosaki, who deflected the deadly beam with the flat of his blade.

A maddened cackle echoed through the tunnel, and Zangetsu blurred into view right in front of Kurosaki, bringing his sword down in a hammer-like blow and nearly knocking Kurosaki's own weapon right out of his hands.

Zangetsu brought up his sword for a second strike, already crying out in triumph for what was sure to be a fatal hit, when Kurosaki reached his arm out to the side, a hole getting blown straight through the wall of the tunnel when his shorter blade returned from wherever the hell he'd shot it off to.

Kurosaki swung the blade, redirecting Zangetsu's sword stroke away from himself at the very last second with it, then while the Minotaur was off-balance, mercilessly opened him up from hip to collarbone with a single, brutal slash of his butcher's blade.

It had happened so fast.

Grimmjow had never even thought Kurosaki capable of that kind of swift, decisive brutality, yet the swathe of red dripping down the tunnel wall beside him proved otherwise.

With three distinct clangs, both combatants' weapons fell to the ground.

Zangetsu himself wasn't far behind them, his knees giving out and sending him on a collision course with the cold, hard ground, only for Kurosaki to gather him up in his arms instead and gently lower him to the ground.

"I'm King," Kurosaki stated, the tone of his voice leaving no room for doubt, despite the almost gentle way in which he spoke the words. Zangetsu gasped wetly in response, choking on his own blood, and Kurosaki carefully removed the Minotaur Mask to reveal a face identical to his own underneath.

Kurosaki's pale mirror image coughed, blood dripping down his jaw. **"Yeah…" **he chuckled, baring a mouthful of reddened teeth. **"I'm glad… you finally look like yourself again."**

With a tenderness that made Grimmjow feel as if he was intruding on something entirely too personal, Kurosaki brushed his doppelganger's hair away from his face and cupped his jaw. "I'm sorry... for being such a difficult wielder."

Zangetsu smiled wider, the corners of his inhuman eyes crinkling with amusement. **"Y'er still… the only King… I'd ever serve," **he croaked out weakly, his voice becoming distant as his body began to fade away in motes of red light. As his strength left him entirely, Zangetsu's head lolled forward, his cheek pressing against Kurosaki's chest.

He met Grimmjow's eyes. **"It was fun… ****_Koneko-chan," _**he whispered, **"Let's play again soon."**

The last traces of him disappeared, his chuckling continuing to echo for long after he was already gone. Kurosaki took a deep breath, then gathered up his fallen swords and sheathed them. His eyes flashed yellow for just an instant when he turned to face Grimmjow, but returned to normal fast enough that Grimmjow could almost convince himself that it had been a trick of the light. The red-and-white pieces of armor that were now layered over his Shinigami robes however, seemed to be there to stay.

"…You ready to go?" Kurosaki asked, after a long silence. Grimmjow could only nod. He'd known Kurosaki was a monster, but he never imagined the gap between them would be _that _extensive. If he'd really wanted to, Kurosaki could have killed him easily during their earlier fight, even without using his Quincy powers.

Somehow, that knowledge failed to really discomfort him.

When Kurosaki offered him his shoulder again, Grimmjow didn't hesitate to sling his arm back around his neck, and together they started marching again. "…I was never even a threat to you, was I?" Grimmjow asked. He felt a lot calmer asking that question than he'd expected himself to be.

"…Not much is, anymore," Kurosaki admitted softly. Grimmjow could appreciate the honesty at least.

"Cut that shit out," he admonished Kurosaki, giving him a firm yank around the neck. "That whole damn broody teenager-thing you're doing right now. I'll catch up to you in no time, and then I'll give you a fight you can actually enjoy. You'll be some damn exhausted you won't even have the energy left to blow up that shitty town of yours. So don't fucking _pout _at me like that."

"…I wasn't _pouting," _Kurosaki denied, narrowing his eyes at Grimmjow. It did nothing to hide the grin that was pulling at his lips, however.

Grimmjow huffed out a laugh. "God, you can be so easy to read."

"To you, maybe," Kurosaki admitted, leaving Grimmjow unsure of how to reply.

"I don't get what you were even worried about in those months after the War," he said instead. "'Course I was still alive. Like I'd let that talking pencil dick Nnoitra be the one to take me out."

Kurosaki snorted, shaking his head. "He was the one who wore the curly-toed shoes and kinda looked like a giant spoon, right?"

Grimmjow smirked. "Wanna know why he dressed like that?" he asked. "That giant, gangly freak had his Hollow Hole right where his eye was supposed to be. Fucker needed that spoon-looking thing to keep the wind from blowing straight through his head."

Kurosaki almost steered them both into a wall when he promptly choked on his own spit. "The curly-toed shoes though, I have no fucking clue," Grimmjow added, grinning wide enough to hurt his cheeks when Kurosaki laughed so hard he actually cried a little.

Under Kurosaki's lead, the pair of them blundered their way through the tunnel like a pair of drunkards, egging each other on with increasingly-daft trash talking, more often than not at the expense of former foes and supposed allies. By the time the word 'Butterflaizen' had stopped making Kurosaki wheeze every time it was uttered, Grimmjow was in actual, physical pain from trying to keep his composure and he was helping Kurosaki stay upright as much as Kurosaki was him.

"Oh god," Kurosaki gasped, face redder than his hair from laughing. "Urahara's going to kill me for blowing up his basement when we get back and I don't even care."

"You've survived a lot worse than some pervy scientist trying to kill you," Grimmjow placated him, unimpressed. "I'm sure you'll be just fine, Kurosaki."

"Oh, I know," Kurosaki piped up blithely. "'Cuz when Urahara asks what it was that set me off, I'm gonna be blaming this whole thing on _you."_

"You little shit-!"

As a glowing, golden portal to the outside world entered into view and Grimmjow's arm looped around a laughing Kurosaki's neck in a chokehold, he couldn't help but think it all over.

Sure, he hadn't been the one to slay the Minotaur in the end, and Kurosaki made for a pretty shit prize as far as treasure recovered from the heart of a labyrinth went, but all in all?

He looked at Kurosaki; this scowling, broody piece of shit of a teenager with entirely too much power and too little sense to back it up, who could nevertheless make the whole world seem just that bit brighter with a single, unguarded smile; even to a soul-eating monster like him.

…Yeah. He could do a lot worse.


End file.
